“The cover over there is about twelve centimetres.” Daniel pointed his thumb over his shoulder.
“Is that where the body is?” Colin asked.
“Yes.”
Working with neurotypical people was vexing. They seldom stayed on point in a conversation. I took a step closer to Vinnie. “Why were you complaining about the people walking their dogs?”
“I wasn’t complaining about the people.” Vinnie grinned. “Only the weather.”
“Ignore him, Doc.” Manny turned his back on Vinnie. “One of the dogs found our victim. That’s why these people are important.”
“Did they see anything else?” Colin asked. “Someone dumping the body, driving away?”
Daniel shook his head. “No, they said they got here for a walk after lunch when one of the dogs broke free of his leash and ran off the path. His owner found him barking like crazy at what he thought at first was a pile of clothes. But when he got closer, he saw it was a body.”
“Did anyone touch it?”
“I don’t know.” Daniel turned to his left. “Canet! Come here for a sec.”
An officer in his mid-thirties walked to us. He was wearing a police-issued winter jacket, hat and gloves. “Good day, everyone.”
Around me, the men nodded and Daniel shook his hand. “Do you know if anyone touched the body?”
“No. The woman whose dog found the body said she immediately saw he was dead.” Despite his heavy French accent, he spoke English with ease. He tapped on his temple and rolled his eyes. “Silly woman said she watches lots of cop shows and knew she shouldn’t touch the body. She phoned us.”
“That’s not silly.” Why would he say that?
“That isn’t.” He rolled his eyes again. “But then she said there’s enough DNA everywhere that she knows we’ll find the killer very quickly.”
“Hah!” Pink shook his head as he laughed. “She really said that?”
“C’est vrai.”
“Of course it’s true.” Pink nodded in completely fake agreement. “Because the killer always leaves his or her DNA behind for us to find. And the DNA results even reveals his or her motivation and tells us where the murder weapon is.”
“Did they give you any useful information?” I didn’t have patience for this inane discussion.
“Non.” Canet glanced at the group of friends huddled next to a silver Ford Focus. There was nothing in their body language that gave me pause. They all seemed distressed and kept looking back in the direction of the crime scene. “But each one of them has a theory about what happened.”
“Let me guess.” Pink’s smile lifted his cheeks. “They also watch a lot of cop shows.”
“Oui.” He grinned when Pink chuckled. Then his expression sobered. “I cordoned off the scene, but between the dog, the owner and all her friends who came rushing over when she screamed, any footprint evidence in the snow has been destroyed. But they didn’t touch him and neither did we. The body is exactly as they found it.” His lips thinned. “It’s not good.”
“Shall we?” Manny pushed his hands in his oversized coat’s pockets.
The officer stayed with his vehicle while we walked into the forest. A clear path had been formed in the snow where the first responders and everyone else had made their way to the body. Deeper into the trees, the snow was pristine, forming a pure white blanket that reflected the weak daylight. At seventeen minutes past four in the afternoon, we only had another two hours before it would be dark.
Daniel slowed down and turned to look at me. “The young man has been brutalised. Please prepare yourself.”
My eyes widened and I pushed Mozart’s symphony back into my mind. “Brutalised?”
“It would be better if you saw it for yourself. I don’t want to influence your observations with my opinion.”
I mentally played the first two lines of the symphony.
“Ready?” Daniel waited until I nodded, then walked around a copse of trees and stepped to the side.
I inhaled deeply and held my breath for four seconds. It was the blood that caught and held my attention. The contrast against the white snow somehow made the scene look even starker. I took a step closer, making sure I stayed on the snow that had already seen a lot of foot traffic.
Caelan’s friend was lying very close to a large shrub, the low-hanging branches touching his left shoulder and hip. His legs were at an odd angle and his arm closest to us undoubtedly broken. He was dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers and hooded sweater that wasn’t zipped up. No outdoor wear. His red hair was cropped close to the sides and the longer hair on top flopped over his forehead. I gasped when I looked at his face and immediately turned my attention elsewhere.
A large blood pool to the left of his head suggested trauma to the back of his head. Blood had also pooled under his left knee and his right arm. I shuddered at the realisation of what this meant. “He was left here to die.”
“That’s what the medical examiner said.” Daniel’s tone was sombre, his expression fierce. “The killer maimed Jace, then dumped him here to bleed out and freeze to death. The ME will only give us his exact cause of death after an autopsy.”
“Poor kid.” Manny stepped closer and frowned. “Why would anyone work him over like this?”
“He sure was beaten up badly.” Vinnie also walked closer and went down on his haunches to look at Jace’s body. I didn’t want to go any closer yet. Instead I studied Vinnie’s and Manny’s body language as they looked at Jace. I knew the moment Vinnie noticed something that concerned him. He pushed up from his haunches and looked at Colin. “Dude. Come look here.”
Colin squeezed my hand, then walked the three metres to join the others. They were obscuring my view and I was now curious to know what Vinnie had seen. I took a deep breath and stepped closer.
“Shit.” Colin lowered himself and stared at Jace’s right hand for a few seconds. Then he leaned a bit to the side to look at the young man’s face. My first glimpse of his face had been shocking. I inhaled deeply and forced myself to look at him.
Jace’s face was a bloody mess. His left eye was completely swollen shut with a deep cut a centimetre above his eyebrow. His left cheek had a few cuts and was also terribly swollen, bruising still fresh, the discolouration interrupted by death. Whoever had punched him excessively was right-handed.
His left hand was hidden from our view by the shrub. Looking at his right hand made me take a step back. “He was tortured.”
That was the only explanation for why every finger on his hand was broken, some in more than one place.
Colin pushed himself up and nodded. “He suffered greatly.”
Soon after I’d first met Colin, he’d been kidnapped by Russians and had been tortured for days before Vinnie had found and rescued him. It had taken Colin more than six months to recover from his injuries. He still had a deep scar on his right leg from that experience. It would explain why his facial muscles indicated distress.
“I don’t get it.” Daniel shook his head. “He was a sweet young man who liked to go geocaching. What on earth could the killer have wanted from him?”
“We need more data.” I always needed more data. “We need to know everything about Jace.”
“Francine’s already on it.” The corners of Manny’s mouth turned down. “I have a bad feeling about this one.”
I walked closer to the shrub, making sure to stay far away from the blood frozen around his head. I lowered myself onto my haunches and looked at the side of Jace’s body that had been hidden from us. The shade from the trees and this shrub combined with the weak daylight made it hard to see detail. I looked at Daniel. “Do you have a flashlight?”
“Not on me.”
“I do.” Vinnie opened one of the side pockets on his dark combat trousers and took out a small flashlight. He walked over and handed it to me. “Twist the top to turn it on.”